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Ralph R. Reiland: Rewriting Reagan -- again

[Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur.]

Barack Obama was way too pro-Reagan during an interview earlier this year with the Reno Gazette-Journal's editorial board, according to Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University and twice-weekly columnist at The New York Times.

"Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," said Obama, asserting that Reagan offered a "sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing" in American politics.

Obama's statement hardly seems controversial, given that Ronald Reagan unmistakably changed the course of the United States and considering the weak sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that was manifestly on display in Reagan's four immediate predecessors --- Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter.

Nonetheless, "the furor over Barack Obama's praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown," asserted Krugman. "The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics."..
Read entire article at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review